Watkins: Aldrin captivates MSU students

Buzz Aldrin, in one of the iconic photos in history, stands on the moon as Neil Armstrong snaps his picture July 20, 1969. The 86-year-old moonwalker spoke at Mississippi State Tuesday night.(Photo: Photo courtesy of NASA)

STARKVILLE - Buzz Aldrin walked on stage to thunderous applause from the 1,024 who packed the gorgeous Bettersworth Auditorium, inside Lee Hall, on the Mississippi State campus.

The second man to walk on the moon smiled, then quickly struck a pose Tuesday night as if he might surprise us with a dance. Instead, he slowly raised his right pant leg to reveal red, white and blue socks. The crowd roared.

We can’t show you photographs or video of the moment — or any of his 80-minute speech and question-and-answer session — because Aldrin prohibited professional photographers and videographers from recording his visit to Mississippi.

That is a shame for a couple of reasons. One, it prevented those who couldn’t make it to the event from ever seeing it. Two, the world would have appreciated the new and mellowed Buzz Aldrin, who at 86 is far from the sour puss he came to be known in his post-astronaut days.

He was funny, introspective, charming, mesmerizing and, so it seemed, happy. And much to everyone’s delight, he was more than willing to share details of his journey on Apollo 11 in July 1969, when he and the late Neil Armstrong became the first humans to land on the moon and explore it.

It was also refreshing to see that Aldrin’s appearance, and what he means to our nation’s history, didn’t fly past MSU’s students. Free tickets were gone in no time after the event was posted. For those who weren’t able to get a ticket, MSU officials set up a simulcast that was watched by approximately 200 at the student union.

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Yes, Apollo 11 happened nearly 47 years ago. But it seems the more the calendar turns, the more Americans appreciate it.

Jim Lovell, who flew on Apollo 8 and Apollo 13, told me when I was writing my 2005 book “Apollo Moon Missions: The Unsung Heroes”: “Most events that have a great effect on the people of the earth run a cycle, whereby there is initial euphoria, followed by a period of forgetfulness until it matures.”

Apparently, the time of maturity is upon us.

“It was amazing to sit here and listen to a man who has been outside of all of earth’s boundaries, who has stepped on another surface — the moon,” said Claire Troxler, a 21-year-old junior communications major from Wears Valley, Tennessee. “It’s hard to comprehend. I mean, he stood up there almost like a fable. It’s like they are two different people — the astronaut who walked on the moon, and the man who is right there in front of me. But he came here to encourage us to be bold and take that next step, which would be to go to Mars. And I appreciate that.”

“Seeing him and listening to him made fantasy become real life,” said Anna Grider, a 20-year-old communications major from Huntsville, Alabama.

Bradley Huddleston, 24, a second-year mechanical engineering doctoral student from Payette, Idaho, said: “This is one of those nights you know you’ll remember the rest of your life. To have lived during that time of the moon missions and to have seen it live … I can’t even imagine. For people our age, the thing we will always remember is 9/11. People who are a little older than us, it’s probably the Columbia (space shuttle) explosion. Two disasters. So to have something like the moon landing to remember during your lifetime, such a positive thing, would be amazing.”

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Aldrin was presented a cowbell, the school’s spirit symbol. Upon request, he gave it a hearty ring, which perhaps brought the loudest roar of the evening.

He noted that MSU has its share of accomplished alumni, including author John Grisham.

“I understand you’re a really big football school,” he said, which brought more applause.

Then he settled in and took the audience, with the help of photos and videos, on a journey from 1957, when the Soviet Union scared the pants off the United States by launching the first satellite — Sputnik — into earth orbit, to 1969 and America’s victory in the race to be the first to reach the moon.

“I was in the right place at the right time,” he said, referring to his work ethic, his 66 combat missions flown during the Korean War and his degree in mechanical engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

And this: While pursing his doctorate in 1963 from MIT, he chose to write his thesis on “manned orbital rendezvous.” He admitted: “I had no idea how important that would be as we attempted to go to the moon.”

He joked that he took “the first selfie” during a spacewalk on Gemini 12 in 1966, his face visible behind a visor and the earth serving as a backdrop.

He said the Apollo 11 crew, which also included command module pilot Michael Collins, blasted off with “about a 60 percent chance in my mind” that they would be able to successfully land on the moon. In interviews. Armstrong rated it “about a 50 percent chance.”

He repeated some of his most famous words from his trip to the lunar surface, including “magnificent desolation.” That is how he described the moon to millions watching the telecast.

He also chuckled about NASA giving the two astronauts a “Go” for takeoff from the moon. “They certainly weren’t going to say no,” he said. “When they said it’s a ‘Go’ I said back to Mission Control, ‘We are No. 1 on the runway.’ ”

There was a question I would have liked to have asked him. In my book, NASA chief of photography during Apollo, Richard Underwood, pointed out there are no photographs of Armstrong on the lunar surface, unless you count two or three that are out of focus and taken from a distance. "Buzz didn't take any," Underwood said.

Aldrin even mentioned Tuesday night that “Neil had the camera most of the time,” which has always been his response when questioned about it.

Underwood said in 2004: “Buzz took plenty of pictures while on the moon. He just didn’t take any of Neil. So in the thousands of photographs we have from the six lunar landings, we have none of the first person to walk on the moon.”

Underwood said Aldrin didn’t take any of Armstrong “because he was (expletive) off about Neil being the first" to set foot on the moon.

Underwood said Armstrong, who died in 2012 at age 82, realized it and set up a camera inside the lunar module after the spacewalk and took his own selfie so he would at least have one photo of himself while on the moon.

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Aldrin was open about his personal struggles post-Apollo 11.

“I discovered that going to the moon was not the most difficult part,” he said. “It was figuring out what to do with my life once we got back that proved to be really tough."

Aldrin said he went through severe bouts of depression and battled alcoholism. He shared with the crowd that he has been sober for more than 30 years

“I asked for help,” he said. “Don’t ever be afraid to ask for help.”

He is still exploring. In a mini-submarine, Aldrin studied the remains of the Titanic at the bottom of the North Atlantic. He has been to the North Pole and to England’s Stonehenge. He scuba dives “two or three times a year.”

His appetite for learning has never faded. “You never know where you’ll find me on earth,” he said. “If you’d like to keep up, please do so on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and on my website.”

Most of all, Aldrin continues to push the importance of space exploration. He is paying close attention to the presidential debates because “the next president is going to decide if we are going to Mars anytime soon.” He has written flight plans, suggesting how to put humans on Mars.

He believes July 20, the date of the Apollo 11 landing, should be a national holiday. “It would remind us of what America did, where we’ve been and where we can go,” he said.

At the end of his presentation, Aldrin had a message to the students in the audience. It has become his motto in recent years: “Get your ass to Mars.”